


dancing in a swirl of golden memories

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Exes, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Back Together, ft. Luke Leia and Han, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 06:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16805182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: A long time ago, in a desert far away, Rey and Ben met each other and fell in love.But that was years ago, before they went their separate ways and grew as people and ran into each other in college a while later. Now all they have is a close friendship, fond memories, and… oh, what’s this? An opportunity to fake date in order to appease Ben’s parents for the holiday season?(This is exactly what you think it is, dear reader.)





	dancing in a swirl of golden memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reylocalligraphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylocalligraphy/gifts).



> A very happy birthday to one of the sweetest, kindest souls I've ever met in fandom!!! You're the true _Rey_ of sunshine in this community, and I hope this fic brings you even a tiny fraction of the joy you bring us. <3
> 
> Title taken from Over the Garden Wall's _Into the Unknown._

“One margarita, coming right up!” Rey assures her regular, Kaydel, before she makes her way down the bar to assemble the drink. It’s a slow night – Wednesdays always are – so thankfully she doesn’t need to worry about rushing the order or tending to a dozen other customers. Unfortunately, that also means she’s the only one working tonight, and Jess isn’t here to stand between Rey and the redhead who’s been rather openly staring at her for the past two weeks.

He’d shown up before her shift started today, sometime during the early evening when Maz was still handling the bar, and hasn’t ordered another drink since. Rey prays that he won’t, that he’ll drain what’s left of his wine – what kind of person comes to the Cantina and orders _red wine_ , anyway? – and be on his merry way, but as soon as she walks past him her hopes are dashed.

“Nice hearing a familiar voice this far from home,” the stranger says with a smile that strikes her as painfully insincere, and Rey stares blankly at him for a second before it clicks.

“Oh,” she mumbles, gives him the smallest customer service smile she can get away with before she turns her back on him to gather the ingredients for Kaydel’s drink. “The accent, right.”

The shelves lining the wall feature a mirrored back, and Rey notes with a slight swell of irritation that the man isn’t about to be deterred by her clear disinterest, already opening his mouth to say more. He seems harmless enough, but it’s stuff like this that makes her glad she doesn’t have to walk home alone at the end of the night.

“A fellow Coruscanti, if I’m not mistaken?” he asks as Rey gets to work, and goes on even when she pretends not to hear him over the cacophony of the shaker. “Whereabouts from?”

“The city,” Rey answers vaguely before crouching down to scoop up some crushed ice. It’s not exactly a lie, but she’s going to need this conversation to end before he tries to bond with her over the finer details of Coruscant City; all she remembers from her time there is wandering the streets for a handful of days before she was picked up by the cops and promptly sent away to Jakku.

Drink in hand, Rey finally turns to find the man wearing a bright grin. “What a coincidence!” he remarks, as if Coruscant City doesn’t hold two-thirds of the state’s population. She gives him a curt nod and leaves to deliver the drink, lingering by the opposite end of the bar to chat with Kaydel and her friend Poe for a while.

“Is General Hugs bugging you?” Poe, her TA from last year and a newly-minted grad school survivor, asks with concern creasing his brow, subtly tilting his head in the direction of the persistent redhead.

Rey laughs at the moniker. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she assures him. “What’s with the nickname?”

Poe shrugs. “Bugs the hell out of him, that’s all. But seriously, Rey, let us know if there’s anything.”

Kaydel nods in agreement. “He’s a piece of work. I don’t think the word _no_ exists in his vocabulary.”

“I figured,” Rey mutters. “Thanks, guys, but I’m okay. Besides, Ben should be here soon–”

“Excuse me!” Hugs – she can’t be bothered to ask Poe for his actual name – calls out, snapping his fingers to get Rey’s attention. She sighs and rolls her eyes for Poe and Kaydel’s benefit before trudging back to the only other customer seated at the bar. Where are the hordes of demanding students when you need them?

Rey grabs the bottle of wine on her way over and holds it up in a silent question as she approaches Hugs. He nods with a smile and holds out his glass, and she’s barely even done pouring before he strikes up conversation again.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name earlier,” he says with the same unsettling smile from before, the one that’s probably meant to be charming. “I’m Armitage Hux. You’ve probably heard of my family, my father is the mayor of our lovely city, after all–”

“Hey, sweetheart, sorry I’m late,” a familiar voice interrupts, and Rey doesn’t think she’s ever been this glad to see Ben. She automatically turns towards him with a bright smile even as the old endearment hits her with a familiar pang of longing, and somehow Ben knows to lean over the bar and press a kiss to her temple, to hide his lips from view as he murmurs, “Need a little help?”

Rey stretches up on her tiptoes to hide her face in the curve of his shoulder. “Perfect timing,” she mumbles against his warm skin, making a show of pressing a kiss to the side of his neck before they part.

Hugs – Hux – looks at them as if he’s stepped in shit. “Oh,” he says mildly, feigning disinterest as he swirls the contents of his glass. “I wasn’t aware that you two are… acquainted, Solo.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Hux,” Ben says with a casual shrug as he slides into a seat three chairs down, offering the other man a smug grin before he turns back to Rey.

“The usual?” she asks before he can say anything, and Ben nods as his smile grows soft, laces their fingers together and gives her an affectionate squeeze before he lets go. The keg of Maz’s secret brew is kept at the very end of the bar, but it’s not so far that Rey can’t make out the sound of Ben talking to Hux. Their exact words, however, are lost on her, drowned out by _thud-thud-thud_ of her racing heart, blood rushing in her ears as every nerve tingles from Ben’s unexpected touch.

It’s not like they don’t do their fair amount of touching; Rey has always been one for physical affection with her friends, and Ben… well, Ben’s always been one for physical affection with Rey. But to hear him call her sweetheart again after all these years, to feel his lips on her skin and his breath against her ear… she wants to smile until her cheeks hurt and cry until her eyes burn.

She hovers by the keg until the feeling has passed, until her heart has slowed down. By the time she returns with Ben’s order, Hux has already finished his wine; he throws some cash down on the bar and pulls his coat on in a clear hurry to get away, and Ben watches with an all-too-satisfied look as the redhead scurries off without so much as a single word of thanks.

“I didn’t realize you two know each other,” Rey tells him as she sets his glass down and plants her elbows on the bar, taking full advantage of the quiet night to catch up with Ben.

“History minor,” he explains, absentmindedly chasing a bead of condensation down his glass. “We’ve shared a few classes. He’s…” Ben’s features twist into a grimace as he tries to come up with a descriptor, and Rey laughs quietly at the sight before she jumps in.

“A rich brat who thinks he deserves anything he wants?” she guesses.

A bark of surprised laughter escapes Ben. “I was going to say _persistent_ , but that works too,” he concedes. “But, um, sorry if I came on too strong there. I saw how tense you were and my first reaction was just to butt right in.”

He can’t quite meet her eye, choosing instead to focus on his sweating glass, and in the low light of the pub Rey imagines she can make out the faintest hint of red on his ears. It used to be the cutest thing in the world to her, the way his ears gave him away in the beginning, back when he was still pretending to be some badass teen runaway who wasn’t the slightest bit interested in her.

It still is.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rey assures him, pushing back from the bar to lean against the shelves instead, putting a little space between them. “I was hoping you’d show up sooner rather than later and help chase him off. Besides,” she shrugs, weighs her next words carefully and releases them with measured indifference, “it’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

She expects nervous laughter to follow, or maybe even a surprised cough. It shouldn’t be this gratifying to draw a reaction from him over their past, but it’s been more than two years since he walked back into her life, two years and still _nothing_. If this is the most Rey can get from him, if this is the only way she can prove to herself that it wasn’t just some fever dream out in the desert, then she’ll take it. It’s usually harmless enough, anyway, just an amusing reaction from Ben and a fleeting moment of eye contact before the atmosphere grows tense and heavy and one of them starts a new conversation. Today, however–

Today Ben remains quiet for a beat, clears his throat and slowly drags his eyes up to hers. “I, um… about that. I…”

_I miss that. I miss you. I want you back._

He could say any of these three things – he could say _anything_ , really – and Rey would gladly throw herself over the bar and back into his arms. But she knows better than to expect anything of the like, especially after all these years of getting her hopes up and completely misreading the situation. It’s no different this time, of course.

“Are you still free for Christmas?” Ben asks rather abruptly, abandoning his earlier train of thought.

“Pub’s closed and Finn’s spending the holidays with Rose,” Rey shrugs. “So yeah, I’m free. Are you up for the usual pizza and Disney marathon?” she suggests, unable to keep the slight note of hope out of her voice.

Ben pulls his coaster free from under his drink and starts fiddling with it. He won’t rip it or anything – he’s considerate like that – but it’s still distracting to watch him spin it around on the bar.

“I’ll, um… Actually, I’m going home for Christmas this year. To spend it with my family,” he adds, and Rey has never felt this proud and this disappointed. It’s a huge step, of course, for Ben to choose to spend the holidays with his family, and it’s exactly the path she’d envisioned for him when she pushed him away all those years ago. But on the other hand… pizza and Disney on Christmas is their thing, their last and only thing together. She doesn’t know what’ll be worse: spending Christmas alone, or spending Christmas without Ben.

Still, Rey plasters on a mostly-sincere smile and reaches out to give Ben’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “That’s great. I’m so happy you’re spending time with them again.”

“Me too,” he smiles, turns their joined hands around and laces their fingers together. “For the most part, at least. It’s just, my mom… well… she’s been getting on my case about being single.” Ben moves his eyes up to hers for just a split second before he drops it down to their hands. “And, I mean, I love her and I’m looking forward to seeing her, but it was just… it was a little annoying.”

“Okay?” Rey asks slowly, dragging the word out in her confusion. She likes to think she knows Ben pretty well after two years of friendship and all that came before, but she can’t quite figure out where he’s heading with this.

“So, I, um…” Ben ducks his head, mumbles something under his breath that she can’t quite catch.

“Come again?”

“ItoldherIhaveagirlfriend,” he blurts out, takes a deep breath before he tries again. “I told her I’m seeing someone. That I have a girlfriend. But I don’t. Which is a problem because now my mom is expecting a girlfriend, and I really don’t want to have to deal with her matchmaking attempts once she finds out I’m single, so I was wondering if maybe… if maybe… you– that is, only if you feel like it, I wouldn’t _make_ you or anything–”

Rey has imagined this moment at least a thousand times since the day she and Ben went their separate ways, a thousand more since the day they found each other again at a welcome back party during sophomore year. _Get back together with me so that my mom doesn’t figure out my lie_ wasn’t in any of those scenarios, but yes, _yes,_ of course the answer is yes–

“Ben,” she whispers, slows her horses and reins in the answer to a question he’s yet to ask. “Ben, what are you saying?”

Her heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her _throat_ , and Rey worries that the blood rushing past her ears might just drown out Ben’s next words so she zooms in on his lips, pays close attention to them as they form the words–

“Rey, will you fake date me for Christmas?”

Her heart, broken since the day she watched him drive away from Jakku nearly four years ago, shatters all over again.

* * *

It’s a Friday the next time Hux shows up, blessedly close to the end of her day shift.

“Oh, hello,” he says when he looks up from his menu to find her waiting with an order pad, and Rey notes with relief that there’s no artifice in his voice this time, that he genuinely didn’t come here with the intention or expectation of seeing her.

So at least the act was good for something.

Hux keeps their interaction straightforward, places his order without any attempt to derail the conversation. It’s only after she’s delivered his food that he brings up the other night.

“So, you and Solo? I wasn’t even aware that he was seeing anybody.”

“It’s a long story,” Rey shrugs, figuring she might as well take the opportunity to practice their cover. “We dated a year before college, but the timing wasn’t right. Two years later a mutual friend introduced us at a welcome back party, but it took us a while to realize that neither of us had moved on and the both of us wanted to be together again.”

“Ah,” Hux nods, dabs at the corner of his mouth like a dainty lady. “So it’s a new thing then, the two of you?”

Rey allows a smile to grace her lips. “Both new and old, I guess. Enjoy your meal,” she says politely, and Hux lets her go with nothing but a faint _thank you_.

 _Hux_ , Ben had ranted during their walk home the other night, _he’s one of those old-school ‘gentlemen’_. He’d used actual air quotes, and for the first time since his request at the pub Rey felt her lips twitching with amusement at the sight of Ben’s face scrunched up in distaste. _He’ll keep pushing even if a woman’s clearly not interested, but the second he finds out she_ belongs _to another man he immediately backs down._

And sure, she’d been disgusted by Hux’s all-too-familiar behavior and mindset too, but a bigger part of Rey had been too focused on the idea of belonging to Ben to actually react to that part. And now she gets to pretend that she actually is his for the next two days.

Three o’clock rolls around just minutes later, and Rey’s undoing the knots of her apron and reaching for her bag stashed under the bar before Jess can even punch in.

“I’m leaving, Maz! Happy Christmas!”

“Say hi to the in-laws for me!” her boss calls from her office in the back, her clear and authoritative voice ringing out across the quiet pub.

From the corner of her eye she sees Hux’s head suddenly snap up, and behind her Rey catches a muffled laugh from Jess. “Maz!” she protests, stomping over to the office.

“What?” her boss scoffs without even looking up from her papers. “I’ve seen the way that boy looks at you, darling child. Mark my words.”

Maz is the wisest woman in town, but even unnaturally prescient elderly people are prone to the occasional mistake, Rey supposes. “I’ll see you in a few days,” she says instead of wasting her breath on contradicting the old woman, and just then a familiar honk shatters the peace and quiet of the pub.

“That’s him!” Rey announces, and throws one last goodbye over her shoulder as she rushes out the door and into the painfully familiar car Ben is still driving after all these years.

They’d lost their virginities to each other in the backseat, out in the endless expanse of the Jakku desert, under the watchful eye of the universe. And now they’ll be stuck together in this very car for the next three hours as Ben navigates the ancient Falcon to his family’s cabin up in the mountains two states away.

“Ready for the best Christmas Eve dinner of your life?” Ben asks with a too-wide smile as Rey buckles herself in. So they’re ignoring the elephant in the room, then.

Rey can do that. “You know I’m always ready for food,” she retorts as Ben pulls out of the Cantina’s parking lot and merges into traffic. “Did you get the presents for your family?”

Joint presents, because apparently his family doesn’t care about gifts all that much and the greatest gift for his mother will be seeing both their names on the tags, together.

“In the trunk,” Ben informs her, stealing glances over at her when they pull up to their first red light. “Got you one too. Oh, and I got you one for me. I wasn’t sure if you had the time to get anything.”

“I did,” she says casually, as if she hadn’t stayed up all night on Wednesday trying to come up with the perfect fake-girlfriend-but-not-really gift. Between that sleepless night, yesterday’s encore, and this morning’s early start, she can feel her eyelids growing heavier by the second. “But now I’m curious. What did you get yourself on my behalf?”

Ben shrugs, eyes back on the road. “Nothing fancy, just some Neruda.”

“Oh,” Rey tries to say, only for the sound to get lodged in her throat.

Neruda – specifically, his _One Hundred Love Sonnets_ – was the only book Ben had with him when he arrived in Jakku. He hadn’t even meant to bring it along; it just happened to have been in the glove box when he stole the car from his father. But at some point between Chandrila and Jakku Ben had grown bored enough to read it, and then reread it, and then read it again and again and again, and by the time they’d fallen in love he’d memorized dozens of sonnets well enough to whisper them in her ear at night, to lull her to sleep in the most peaceful way she’d ever known.

It’s the perfect sentimental gift – so perfect, in fact, that it’s the exact thing she’d gotten him just yesterday.

But of course she doesn’t tell Ben this. “Good choice,” she says instead, her voice coming out fainter than expected. Rey clears her throat, leans to the side to feel for the lever on her seat. “But keep it for some other time, since I already got you something.”

“All right,” Ben agrees easily, still focused on driving. He doesn’t react when Rey lowers her seat as far back as it’ll go and pulls an oversized shawl out of her bag, and her announcement of a nap is met with a quiet promise to wake her up when they’re near.

Surrounded by the still-familiar scent of the car – artificial pine, firmly embedded in the old upholstery after two decades of use – and the soothing presence of the first person she ever trusted, Rey allows herself to doze off.

A jumble of dreams and memories later, Rey wakes to Ben gently letting her know that they’ve arrived. “Thought,” she slurs, wiping sleep from her eyes. “Thought you were gonna wake me _before_ we got here.” Her voice is dangerously close to a whine, if Ben’s quiet chuckle is anything to go by. Rey blinks the evening sun out of her eyes just as Ben releases her seat belt, and stretches her cramped limbs for a few seconds before she pulls herself up.

“Sleep well?” Ben asks, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. “They’re already watching,” he mumbles before she can get any ideas, and it’s only in that very moment that Rey fully grasps the stupidity of what she’s gotten herself into.

It’s too late to back down though, what with Ben killing the engine and stepping out of the car before she can share her second thoughts with him. He crosses over to get her door instead of heading for the trunk like she’d expected, and offers Rey a hand along with an encouraging smile.

She takes his hand and steps out of the car just in time to see the double doors open to reveal three waiting figures.

“Well, well, well!” One of the two men calls out, slowly clapping his hands together as he steps past the threshold and onto the porch. “Look what the cat dragged in!”

Ben huffs and rolls his eyes, drops her hand to dutifully turn around and greet the man. “Nice to see you too, Uncle Luke,” he says flatly, voice carrying across the short distance to reach his uncle’s ears.

“We can get our things in a bit,” Ben tells her as a hand comes to rest on the small of her back, guiding her up the driveway and towards the too-fancy cabin with its too-fancy people. “Breathe,” he whispers to her as they approach his family, and the hand on her back moves to curl around her waist to pull her closer. “They already love you,” he adds, and Rey nearly stumbles over her own damn feet.

“But–” _they don’t even know me_. It’s been less than two days since she and Ben agreed to this; there’s no way he could’ve told them anything substantial in that amount of time, anything to make them even like her.

Before she can voice that thought, though, Ben leads her up the short flight of stairs and brings them to a stop right in front of his mother.

“Hi, Mom. This is–”

Leia Organa steps forward and wraps her hands around Rey’s arms. “Rey,” she says warmly, a genuine smile blooming on her face. “It’s so nice to _finally_ meet you.”

In another life, this woman could’ve been her mother-in-law. In yet another life, though, she and her husband could’ve been mere shadows of themselves, hollowed out by the absence of a son who once swore to Rey that he would never return to his family.

 _You did the right thing,_ Rey assures herself as she’s done countless times before, draws comfort and strength from the thought to counteract the bittersweet burn of Ben’s hand around her waist.

To Leia, the woman she’ll probably never see again after this trip, Rey smiles and says, “It’s so nice to meet you too, Mrs. Organa.”

* * *

After dinner, Leia herds everyone into the living room and doesn’t hesitate to point Rey and Ben in the direction of a cramped loveseat while she and Han take the couch and Luke curls up on the remaining wingback.

Ben sits first, knocks the wind out of her lungs when he drapes his arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. Rey makes a quick recovery before anyone can notice the shock clearly written on her face and wraps an arm around his waist in return, takes note of the soft smile that lights up Leia’s eyes when she catches sight of them cuddling up to each other.

“So,” Han says once they’ve all settled down, a tray of spiked eggnog laid out on the coffee table between them. “How’d the kid finally get you back, anyway? Thought he was gonna spend the rest of his life mooning over you instead of actually doing anything about it, you know,” he tells Rey almost conspiratorially, but there’s a note of pride and happiness in his voice that she hopes Ben can hear.

“I wasn’t _mooning,_ ” Ben grumbles under his breath, suddenly tense next to her. It’s been this way all evening – either Han or Luke will say something that doesn’t make sense, and Ben will get all defensive and stressed out over it. Rey wants to tell him to relax, assure him that they’re just teasing and she knows better than to read into it, but they haven’t had a moment to themselves since they came down for dinner two hours ago. So she settles for what she hopes is a comforting squeeze around his middle, and leans further into him as she turns to Han.

“It just took us a while to see that we still lo-” Rey catches herself just in time, masks her near-slip with a cough. “That we still felt the same way. I knew I wanted him back the second Poe introduced us, but Ben…”

“Ben’s never been one to make his intentions clear, has he?” Leia asks knowingly, giving her son a gentle smile to soften the blow.

He brushes a kiss across her temple while Luke and Han make small sounds of agreement. “In my defense,” Ben says evenly, pulling back a bit to look at her, “you’re not that easy to read either. When we met you looked like you’d just seen a ghost, and I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”

Rey shakes her head, gives him a smile meant for his eyes only. “I was surprised, that’s all.”

“In a good way?” Ben asks, and some part of her notes that he’s way too quiet for the others to hear them, for this to be anything other than an honest question between the two of them.

Her eyes drop down to his lips of their own accord as Rey murmurs, “The best way.”

The casual touching, the familiar cuddling – none of that is unusual for them. Even the forehead kisses aren’t new to their friendship, though she’s probably felt his lips on her skin far more in the last two days than she has in the last two years. But for all the physical affection that they share, for all the casual intimacy that’s become part and parcel of their friendship, Rey has not kissed Ben since she was eighteen and in love and terrified for their future.

It’s a line neither of them are willing to cross, apparently, because after a beat Ben draws back, tucks her head under his chin again and addresses their waiting audience, who’d been polite enough to avert their eyes even though the small smiles on their faces suggest they’d seen more than enough.

“Anyway, Rey started bartending this semester so I offered to walk her home whenever she’s working late,” he says, which earns him the approval of all three adults in the room. Rey’s right there with them; she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, but she still appreciates the fact that Ben takes the time out of his schedule to come sit at the bar on nights when she’s closing and wait until she’s done to walk back to their building together.

“I thought he was just being a good friend at first,” Rey picks up the tale. “I’d basically trained myself not to get my hopes up by then, since we’d been friends for two years,” she tells the others with a little twist of her lips, hopes it’s less bitter than it feels. “But then…”

They’ve practiced this part, but now Rey finds herself stumbling. It doesn’t help that she can picture it all so clearly, has imagined some variation of it at least a hundred times in the deepest, most secret corner of her heart.

Ben swoops in when she fails to go on. “One day I just… well, I’d been drinking a little more than usual,” he admits, even injects a bit of shame into his voice. It takes everything in her not to turn around and see if he’s doing that thing he does whenever he’s a bit guilty and knows it, that look he gives her from under his lashes in an attempt at both contrition and charm.

Han lets out a gruff chuckle while Leia shakes her head. “Of course you were,” his father smirks.

“Solo men are hopeless when it comes to emotions,” Leia tells Rey with a roll of her eyes. “The first time I told this one here I loved him, he said _I know_. Can you believe that? Just _I know_. Took him a few weeks and a whole lot of whiskey before he said it back.”

At least Han has the good grace to hang his head and scratch at the back of his neck while he mutters, “Well, I said it _eventually_ , which is what really matters.”

Leia turns to her husband with an indulgent grin, pats his hand like she’s comforting a child. “If you say so, _sweetheart._ ”

She’s heard Han refer to his wife that way all evening, interspersed with the occasional _Princess_ or _Your Highness_ , but even when he’s being snarky it’s easy to see that the little endearments are meant with affection. Coming from Leia, though, it’s clearly just an inside joke.

Rey used to think that it was just a generic term, that Ben had plucked it out of the dozen other things he’d called her in the beginning and settled on it as his favorite. Now… now she understands, and wishes she’d known back then.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Ben says pointedly, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “I was… _relaxed_ , so I ended up saying some stuff I’d been too scared to say before.”

“What kind of stuff?” Luke asks, leaning forward in his chair with interest.

There are a handful of things they’d discussed, varying declarations and statements his family would find satisfying enough. But Rey, Rey finds herself taking Ben’s free hand in her own as she twists around to look at him, as she feeds him words he’ll never say outside of her dreams.

“He asked me, _do you ever miss us?_ ” she says just loud enough for the others to hear, watches carefully for the slight widening of Ben’s eyes, for the hitch in his breath. Her sudden burst of courage leaves her when she’s reminded of the intensity of his stare, of how it’s always felt like he could look into her eyes and read her very soul, and Rey turns back to his family to make her confession away from his watchful eyes.

“And I said, _every day_.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Leia says under her breath, eyes bright with emotion. Beside her, even Han seems to have momentarily lost his knack for breaking heavy moments with an irreverent quip or two, too focused on observing his son with a disarmingly open look on his face.

In the end, it’s Luke who breaks the silence. “Well, I’m glad you two found your way back to each other,” he says gently, giving them a sincere smile. “And I think I speak for everyone when I say welcome to the family, Rey.”

For a moment, just a moment, Rey lets herself forget that none of this is real, that next year Ben will be back here on his own or maybe even with someone else and Rey will be gone and forgotten before she ever had a chance to actually belong here.

“Thank you,” she tells Luke, gives in to the moment when Ben pulls her closer and rests her head on his chest as his lips brush her forehead.

If only this had been the future in store for them all those years ago.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Han declares after a moment of silence, moving forward to pass the eggnog around. “Time for presents and pictures and whatever else we’re supposed to do for good old _tradition_ ’s sake.”

Leia gives him a light smack on the arm for that as she passes by, heading straight for the tall tree in the corner and the small stack of presents underneath. Rey and Ben’s are the newest additions, and that’s the pile she selects for the family’s one-gift-on-Christmas-Eve rule, passing them to Luke who then distributes the gifts accordingly.

Rey, warm from the company and drowsy from the food, feels like she’s been abruptly yanked back into reality as Luke hands Ben a gift – _her_ gift, the one inscribed with words she’s been meaning to tell him for years, words she can only now get away with under the guise of keeping up the act. Han passes her a gift of her own – from Ben – and Rey can barely muster a smile for him, distracted as she is by nerves and doubt and fear.

Once Leia’s settled back down on the sofa, she looks around the room and says, “Well, go ahead!” Luke and Han rip into their presents, though the former does so with much more enthusiasm than the latter, while the rest of them display a little more care in unwrapping their gifts.

Ben finishes with his while Rey is still carefully peeling away tape, and he nudges her shoulder with his own when he catches sight of the title, gives her a little grin and says, “Great minds think alike, huh?”

“I guess,” Rey smiles, and ignores the panic gripping her heart as Ben opens the book to find her message on the first page.

_Ben–_

_so I love you because I know no other way_  
_than this: where I does not exist, nor you,_  
_so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,_  
_so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep._

_Love, Rey_

It takes a small eternity for Ben to look up from her wobbly block letters, and when he does the question in his eyes makes her breath catch. Before either of them can say a word, though, Han looks over at them and asks, “What’ve you got there, kid?”

Ben jumps as the moment is shattered, and Rey goes back to unwrapping her gift while he holds the book up for his family to see.

The last of the wrapping paper falls away to reveal a model telescope in a small acrylic box. “I didn’t want to lug the real thing all the way here,” Ben explains when Rey looks up at him. “But… remember how we used to look at the stars in Jakku?”

“Of course,” Rey whispers, thinking of nights spent leaning against the Falcon or up on the roof of Plutt’s workshop, Ben’s low voice regaling her with tales of warriors and lovers and great rulers immortalized in the stars, stories passed down to him from his uncle.

“I thought maybe you missed that – the stars, I mean – out here in the city. And I checked with the building, it’s okay for us to go up on the rooftop, so maybe if you want to…”

He’s so obviously nervous and hesitant and scared, just as she was with the inscription, and Rey throws her arms around him before she can overthink things. “Ben, I love it,” she murmurs, lips brushing the shell of his ear, and smiles into his neck when he relaxes in her arms.

 _I love_ you, Rey thinks, and keeps it to herself as the rest of the night goes on. Thanks are exchanged for his family’s gifts, Ben having done a pretty decent job with the selection, and not half an hour later the last of the eggnog is drained and everyone begins to make their way upstairs.

“Try to keep it down, eh?” Han teases them when they part ways at the stairs, and Rey doesn’t have to fake the blush in her cheeks as she hides her face in Ben’s chest while both Leia and Ben snap at Han for his insinuation.

“Maybe you should try taking your own advice,” Luke quips as he brushes past all of them, and a painfully uncomfortable silence follows his disappearance into his room until Han bursts out laughing while a pink-cheeked Leia drags him into their room.

“Good night, kids! See you in the morning!”

Han’s laughter grows muffled as Leia slams the door shut behind them, and when Rey looks up she catches Ben dragging a hand down his face. “File that one under _things I did not need to hear_ ,” he mumbles as Rey opens the door to his room – _their_ room, for tonight – and gently pulls him in.

“I think it’s cute,” she shrugs, feeling around for the light switch as Ben locks the door. “That they’re still in love after all these decades,” Rey elaborates upon catching sight of his incredulous look.

“Sure,” Ben says with a grimace, heads for their bags at the food of the bed. “Let’s put it that way. You first or me?” he asks, pulling a pair of sweatpants and a tank top from his backpack.

“You can go first,” Rey suggests, and a stupid, _stupid_ part of her is the slightest bit disappointed when Ben walks past her and out the door without a kiss on her forehead or anything. She snaps herself out of it, reminds herself of just what they’re doing here as she sits down on the bed they’ll be sharing as _friends._ They’ve accidentally fallen asleep on each other a handful of times during late nights with their friends, but the idea of the both of them deliberately, knowingly getting into the same bed together… _It's just for a night_ , Rey reminds herself. Just one night, and this time tomorrow everything will be back to normal again, with her in her own bed and Ben in his, an apartment away. It’s not worth dwelling on, not when it’ll all be over in the blink of an eye.

Try as she might, though, Rey spends the next ten minutes in their room and her fifteen minutes in the bathroom after that struggling to put the day behind her and write everything off as a product of her overactive imagination. Why would Leia hint at the fact that she’s been waiting to meet Rey for a very long time? Why would Han outright claim that Ben’s been pining for her all these years when his actions have suggested the very opposite? And… and if Han hadn’t interrupted them, would she have been forced to excuse her gift as just a part of the act, or would Ben have said something first?

She _could_ ask him – could gather her courage and walk into the room and say, “Ben, we’re graduating in six months and I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again and I need to know, _please_ –”

But by the time Rey returns, Ben has already fallen asleep. She drops her clothes on the floor next to her bag with a sigh and climbs into the left side of the bed – still her side, after all this time, and she can’t deny that she takes some measure of comfort in that familiarity. Pulling the covers up to her chest, Rey murmurs a soft, “Good night, Ben,” before she turns on her side and faces away from him.

Ben drapes a heavy arm around her waist, pulls her close to his chest. “’Night, sweetheart,” he slurs, barely conscious, and if Rey just closes her eyes and lets herself forget for a minute, she can almost pretend they’re back in her tiny room in Jakku, pressed up together because the small bed wouldn’t allow them to sleep any other way and they couldn’t bear to put any space between them anyway.

Instead, she looks out the window through a small crack in the curtains and loses herself in the unfamiliar landscape, feels herself drifting further and further away from Ben with every passing second.

* * *

Waking up is her sweetest dream and worst nightmare all at once, warmth and bliss and happiness giving way to the slow realization that none of it is real, that the second she gets out of bed it’ll all be over. Rey stays in Ben’s arms far longer than she’s willing to admit to, watches the watery light of grey dawn grow into brilliant beams of morning sunlight. Even the faint sound of someone puttering around in the kitchen can’t lure her away, and she feigns sleep until the call of nature can no longer be ignored.

“Don’t go,” Ben whines as she slips out of his arms, and her heart misses a beat at the rasp of his early morning voice, the one she used to wake up to a lifetime ago.

Rey swings her legs over the mattress, takes a moment to regain her bearings and shake off old memories. “Go back to sleep,” she tells Ben, a little smile tugging at her lips as she runs a hand through his hair and he turns to nuzzle her palm with his eyes still closed. Rest hadn’t come easily to him during their time together, not with the guilt of abandoning his family and the restless buzz of freedom waging a war in his veins. To see him now, perfectly at peace while slumber keeps the rest of the world at bay, fills Rey with a quiet joy that drowns out all her despair.

Ben mumbles a protest against her inner wrist, but makes no move to stop her when Rey finally gets out of bed and bends down to retrieve her toiletries and a fresh set of clothes from her bag.

He’s still sleeping when she returns twenty minutes later to drop off her things, and Rey decides that it probably can’t hurt to let him sleep in while she joins his family for breakfast. She can’t quite resist the temptation to drop a kiss on his forehead before she goes, but her guilt is assuaged by the happy little sigh he lets out at the press of her lips to his skin.

Carefully shutting the door behind her, Rey shakes off her nostalgia and braces herself for the next few hours as she makes her way downstairs and follows her nose to the kitchen. Luke and Leia are quietly chatting amongst themselves, with no sign of Han anywhere.

“Oh, good morning, dear,” Leia smiles, acknowledging her before she can announce her presence.

“Merry Christmas!” Luke adds, blue eyes twinkling with a kind of joyful excitement that wouldn’t be out of place on a seven-year-old. “Come on in, we’ve got all kinds of breakfast food.”

Rey slowly approaches the breakfast nook to find that the twins have indeed prepared a veritable buffet. “Merry Christmas to you too,” she replies, nodding at both Luke and Leia before she takes a seat opposite the latter.

“The merriest one we’ve had in a long time,” Leia beams, plucking an empty cup from the middle of the table. “Coffee or juice?”

“Oh, um, coffee please,” Rey says politely, murmurs a _thanks_ when Leia hands her the cup and Luke pushes over a small tray of sugar, milk, and cream.

Leia gives her an encouraging smile, gestures for her to dig in with a wave at the food. “We’re really so glad to have you here, Rey,” she continues as Rey weighs her options. “I was so happy when Ben told me you two were together again, but I've also been waiting for a long time to meet the woman who sent my son back to me.”

“That’s–” Rey stammers as she drops a croissant onto her plate. “Oh, that’s not… I mean, I encouraged him to reconnect with you, but it was all Ben, really. I didn’t do that much.”

“Rey, I believe my nephew’s exact words were, _I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her, so you can shut your slanderous mouth, you piece of shit,_ ” Luke recounts calmly in between bites of bacon.

“Luke!” his sister gasps in reproach as Rey blinks at them in confusion.

“You have to understand,” Leia turns to her with an apologetic smile, “when Ben suddenly reappeared out of the blue and announced that he was going to turn his life around for a girl… we were understandably suspicious. He’d just come back from nearly a year in who knows where, and suddenly he wanted to change everything about himself – about this family – for _love_.”

“We’re both romantics – all Skywalkers are,” Luke pipes up. “But there’s love, and then there’s _Ben are you sure this girl isn’t just manipulating the sole heir of the Skywalker-Organa-Solo fortune_? Which, by the way, is what led to that little outburst and the accusations of slander.”

Leia smiles at the memory. “The way he defended you, the way he spoke of you… that alone convinced me that this was something special. But when he explained that he wasn’t changing because you asked him to but because you made him want to be a better person – that’s when I knew,” she tells Rey with a secretive smile on her lips.

“Knew what?” Rey asks despite herself, unable to rein in her curiosity.

“Knew that you two were far from done,” Leia says gently, reaches across the table for Rey’s hand. “Rey, my son has spent every single moment since you sent him home pining for you. In a way he got better after everything – having an honest talk with us, getting all of us into family therapy, figuring out what he wanted in life – but I had to watch a part of him waste away with every passing day. I can still remember,” she clears her throat, gives Rey a watery smile. “I can still remember his voice the day you two found each other again. He called me the second he got home, and he said, _Mom, the universe brought her back to me,_ and it was the happiest I’d ever seen him.”

“Until now,” Luke adds quietly, and his sister echoes his words with a nod.

“I–” Rey can feel her throat closing up, see her vision grow blurry with tears, but she’s helpless against the tide of emotions rising within her, the onslaught of memories both old and new rushing past her as her brain struggles to make sense of it all, to slot everything into its rightful place to form the picture Luke and Leia are trying to paint. “I didn’t–” _know, I didn’t know any of this, I’ve cried myself to sleep for the past two years while he slept down the hall thinking he didn’t want me anymore–_

“Oh, dear,” Leia grabs a paper napkin, leans over the table to dab at Rey’s eyes; her tenderness, so similar to Ben's, brings forth a fresh wave of tears. “Rey, is everything all right? I’m so sorry if we said anything wrong, we just thought–”

Rey reaches for the proffered napkin and not-so-delicately blows her nose. “No, no,” she sniffs, swiping at her tears. “You didn’t say anything wrong, I’m just…”

“Overwhelmed?” Luke supplies helpfully.

“Yes,” Rey agrees quickly, reaching for his explanation like a lifeline. “Yes, overwhelmed, that’s all, I spent all that time thinking he didn’t feel the same way anymore and it turns out– it turns out–” There’s no reason for her to be blubbering over her supposed boyfriend still having feelings for her, but mercifully the twins don’t seem to find anything amiss.

“Oh, Rey,” Leia says gently, patting her hand in an oddly comforting gesture. “He never stopped loving you.”

And somehow, suddenly, Rey knows that to be the truth.

The chair makes an ugly sound as it screeches across the tiled floor, but Rey can’t quite bring herself to care. “I’m sorry, I just– I forgot something upstairs, I’ll be right back,” she claims unconvincingly, rushing out of the kitchen before either of the twins can say a word.

Rey takes the stairs two at a time, bursts into their room just as Ben pulls himself upright and lets out a yawn.

“Hey,” he smiles at her, still sleep-dazed and raspy-voiced. “I was just about to– Rey,” he frowns, lurches to his feet when he notices her tears. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“Ben,” she says thickly, holds out a hand to ward him off as she pulls herself together. “Ben, why does your mother think you’re still in love with me?”

He falls back into bed as if his legs just gave out on him, the motion abrupt and graceless. Running a hand through his hair, Ben looks up at her through his lashes – and Rey _knows_.

“Rey, I…”

“It was never going to be just anyone, was it?” she confronts him, thinks of the way he’d lost his nerve that night at the bar after a prolonged silence and assured her that it was okay to say no, he’d just ask someone else– “You couldn’t bring anyone else home, not after–” _two years of pining for me_ “ –everything. It had to be me.”

She moves closer, small, cautious steps towards the bed, and stops short when Ben’s eyes find hers with the same look he used to give her whenever she laughed or surprised him or did something unexpected, the same look he once explained as _you’re everything to me_.

With that look in his eyes, Ben holds out his hand. “Rey,” he whispers, “it’s always been you. From the moment we met, it’s been you. Time and distance and therapy – nothing can change _that_.”

Rey stumbles forward with a sob, takes his hand and allows him to pull her into his lap. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” she cries, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I _waited_ , Ben. After we met I waited and waited for you to say something, to open the door for us again, but you never did and I just…”

“I waited too,” Ben confesses, lips warm on her temple. “I was waiting for the right moment, for some kind of sign, but I waited so long that I started second-guessing everything instead.”

“But why–?” Rey tips her head back to look at him, feels her question dying on her tongue at the sad smile Ben gives her.

“At first I thought you were still the exact same person I knew, but then I realized… Rey, you were amazing before but _god_ , when I met you again you were… alive, glowing, _perfect_. You’d finally found the strength to leave Jakku, you made it to college all on your own, you had this whole new life and all of these new friends and I… I’d been trying, since I left, but I was still such a mess compared to you. And I couldn’t stop thinking of what you said, the day you…” He stumbles over the memory, and Rey surges up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, to apologize for old wounds.

Ben’s voice drops to a whisper. “You said you didn’t want to trade in one trap for another, and I just… I didn’t want to do that to you again, I couldn’t bear the thought of trapping you or weighing you down with my baggage–”

Rey shakes her head. “I regret that,” she sobs at the memory of him and her and the unbearably loud silence that followed words she could never take back, words that accomplished their purpose of sending him away for good. “I’ve regretted that since the second I said it. We were never… Ben, you were never a trap, _never_ ,” Rey assures him. “It’s just… I could see it so clearly, our life together. I could see us old and grey, and I... and I–”

She’d wanted it, more than anything else in the world, but life in Jakku had taught her just how dangerous it was to _want_. It didn’t help that towards the end so many little things about their relationship had weighed on her, things like the way he continued to ignore his open wounds and the way she could feel herself growing dependent on him, things like the sudden, suffocating realization that their relationship was a crutch, a Band-Aid, a fragile thing between two fragile people destined to break. And since they didn’t stand a chance anyway, since she was going to get her heart broken no matter what... she’d sent him away, back into the arms of his family and his only chance at healing.

“Ben,” she says now, takes a shaky breath as he turns the full force of his searching gaze on her. “Ben, I meant what I wrote. In the book,” Rey reminds him, watches comprehension dawn on him and realization widen his eyes. “I meant it,” she insists. “You were the first person I ever loved, and I don’t know… I don’t know how to go back from that. I don’t know how to _not_ love you. I don’t know how to stop.”

His smile is like the return of the sun after a raging storm, like the first glimmer of hope after an endless night. Ben curls a finger underneath her chin, brings their faces close together. “Then don’t,” he whispers, lips just a hair’s breadth away from hers. “Don’t stop, Rey,” he urges her. “I never did.” This close she can see each individual fleck of brown in his irises, can see the hope and question and love in his eyes.

Rey closes the distance between them and answers his question with a kiss.

* * *

They end up staying another night, neither of them having to feign discomfort or reluctance over sharing a bed this time.

On Boxing Day, they walk downstairs hand-in-hand only to be greeted by a grumpy Han. “I thought I told you two lovebirds to keep it down,” he huffs.

“Oh look,” Luke says airily without looking up from his paper. “You finally know how I feel.”

Rey muffles her laughter against Ben’s neck, and he just shakes his head with a sigh as he leads her to the table. Breakfast is a sedate affair compared to yesterday morning’s, and shortly after the last plate is dried and put away, she and Ben begin to make their move.

While Ben trades goodbyes with his uncle and father, Leia comes over to gently grip Rey by her arms like she did just two days ago. “You come back whenever you want to, all right? You’re always welcome here,” she promises Rey, drawing her into a hug. “Especially now that you two are actually together again.”

“What–” Rey tenses in the older woman’s arms, pulls back to look at her in shock. “How did you…?”

“As if my son was going to make a move after _two years_ of doing nothing,” Leia scoffs. “You two just needed a little push. I made sure I’d be in the position to give you one.”

She can’t quite shake off her awe and shock even as Leia moves towards Ben while Luke and Han say goodbye to her, and it’s only once they’re in the car that Rey snaps herself out of it.

“Hey, Ben?” she asks as they pull away. “Why did you tell your mom we were together again, anyway?”

A red ear peeks through his dark curls. “I… I didn’t mean to, but she’s been reminding me this whole semester that our time is running out and I’d lose you for good if I didn’t do anything before graduation, so I thought just telling her that would be enough to get her off my case. But then she insisted that I bring you over, and, well… you know how the rest of it turned out.”

Rey snakes her hand across the console to take Ben’s free one. “I’m glad,” she sighs. “I’m glad your mom pushed you. I’m glad you lied. I’m glad you asked me.”

“Me too, sweetheart,” Ben tells her with a squeeze of her hand. “Me too.”

It’s a smooth journey down the mountain, barely any traffic this early in the morning. Eventually they come across a red light, and Rey turns to Ben to find him smiling at her.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asks her just as the light turns green.

“You called me a desert rat and I called you a spoiled brat,” Rey recalls with a laugh, the memory permanently seared into her brain.

“I was thinking more about the part where you went against Plutt and verbally destroyed him in front of everyone because he tried to rip me off,” Ben reminisces, stealing a look at her.

“Oh, yeah,” she grimaces at the memory. “He wouldn’t let me work for a whole week after that. Worth it, though,” Rey decides as she takes in the sight of the man sitting next to her; who knows if their paths would ever have crossed otherwise?

“You were the first person to stick up for me in… almost a decade,” he informs her. “That, and the fire in your eyes… I took one look at you and knew you’d turn my life upside down.”

Rey softens, leans back in her seat. “And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Ben agrees with a small smile.

She allows her own lips to curve upwards. “Now what?” Rey asks only half-jokingly, thinking of the life that awaits at home, of the friends who’ve been watching them dance around each other for the past two years.

“Well,” Ben shrugs, presses a kiss to her knuckles. “Now we head home and hopefully spend the rest of winter break together. After that, I think we should focus on making it through the rest of college. And after _that_ …” The way he looks at her makes her heart skip a beat and her breath catch in her lungs. “After that, I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you, if you don’t mind.”

In her mind, Rey can see it again: the two of them old and grey after a long, full life together. And this time, this time it’s finally within reach.

“I’d like that,” she tells Ben, and together they step out of the past and into their future.

**Author's Note:**

> I could do my usual self-deprecating “ugh I’m not happy with this my god look at the word count bla bla bla” thing, but this is a gift and that would be rude af.
> 
> So all I’ll say is: [@reylocalligraphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylocalligraphy/pseuds/reylocalligraphy), I hope this was everything you expected it to be and that it warms you even one-tenth as much as the kindness you’ve shown me warms my heart. (Sorry it turned out way more angsty than I expected, but I hope the ending made up for it!) Happy, happy, happy (belated) birthday, you wonderful person!
> 
> Final note: the sonnet quoted is, of course, the infamous Sonnet XVII from Pablo Neruda’s _One Hundred Love Sonnets_ ; here I’ve used a translation by Stephen Tapscott. An earlier line from the same sonnet is a particular favorite of mine, and there’s a fair chance some of you will recognize it: 
> 
> _I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_  
>  _in secret, between the shadow and the soul._
> 
> All right, that’s all from me for now. As always, thank you for reading and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you liked this/have any thoughts you feel like sharing!


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